My friend Jill Berry has recently published a really
intriguing book called
Personal Geographies. (The cover is to the right.) I meet regularly with a group of journal keepers, and if you're like our group, from time to time you find yourself bored with the whole process, feeling guilty for ignoring your practice for days on end. Jill's book will give you a vitamin shot, a booster shot, a lively tonic of ideas and approaches to use in your journal practice. Jill's own art as well as her journal keeping is full of cartographic imagery, and she defines a map in a slightly different way than the traditional one. I am quoting from Jill in the next paragraph because she explains so well what her book is about:
You don't have to be a world traveler or a professional cartographer to embark on a grand journey of self-discovery through mapmaking. Personal Geographies gives you the tools and techniques you'll need to create artful maps of your self, your experiences and your personal journey. Chart the innermost workings of your mind, document your artistic path and create an unfolding maze of your future dreams and goals.
Inside Personal Geographies you'll discover:
21 mixed-media map projects featuring artistic techniques like working with alcohol inks and pochoir, painting on a black surface and carving custom stamps
Insight into the world of traditional and contemporary maps and how they relate to and inspire personal mapmaking
A gallery of maps by contributors from around the world to spark your own creativity
From mapping your head, hands and heart to recording powerful memories or experiences, the maps in Personal Geographies are a gateway into the fascinating and meaningful world of you.”
Above is a page from Jill's book, to give you an idea of some of the examples she has included. I was one of the happy people she invited to try out her prompts for map-making and to submit cartographic image-based artwork to the book. The book nicely reflects its collaborative nature, and the many different approaches taken by the artists in the book are a good example of how the reader can use Jill's prompts to produce their own work.
Between now (December 1) and December 10 Jill is holding a giveaway. If you would like to be included in the raffle of a free copy of Personal Geographies, write a comment below in which you mention some way that you might use mapmaking of any kind in your journal. On December 10 I'll put all of the names of the comment-writers in a hat and select a winner. I'll send the name and street address (having first notified the winner via this blog so that you can email me your street address) to Jill's publisher, and they will ship the book to the winner.
One other thing-- Jill has set up a blog for the book, so check it out at http://personal-geographies.com/
